A “talking” cordless telephone unit has already introduced on the market. The unit can let a caller know information on a called-party before a call is placed, reducing a possibility of dialing a wrong number. In such a cordless telephone unit, a main phone and a cordless handset have respective voice generators for converting called-party information into voice data.
The more items called-party information has, the more functions the voice generator requires: a function converting text data to voice data will do for called-party information having a telephone number only. On the other hand, in a cordless telephone unit equipped with an electronic telephone list, a telephone number and a name corresponding to the number can be stored in the list. In other words, called-party information selected from the telephone list contains a telephone number and a name. That is, the voice generator of a cordless telephone unit having an electronic telephone list needs a function to convert text data associating with a name into voice data so as to be recognizable as a name. However, providing both of the main phone and the cordless handset with such a high-performance voice generator has consequently increased the production cost.